Computer systems are being developed with ever increasing complexity. Computers acquired solely for word processing now come with software that provides paging, scheduling, window management, and device management. Networked computers and workstations also have multiple network protocols, multiple file systems, and multiple application program interfaces.
Several problems have been encountered with the increased complexity of computer systems. One problem is that programs designed for a particular machine may not work efficiently, if at all, on other machines. Many of these programs require computer settings to be set in order for the program to function. A computer setting is a program setting or operating system setting that is used to configure the program or operating system. The computer settings are often manually configured in an effort to get the program to work. The manual configuration is done by trial and error by tweaking settings incrementally to see if an incremental change is sufficient for what is needed. Once the program works, no more tweaking is done.
Another problem is that many settings can not be changed during operation and must be selected prior to operation. A user often does not know which value should be selected to use for a particular setting. In these instances, the user selects a value and sees if the operation will work. If it does not work, the value is changed by stopping the operation, changing the value, and restarting (e.g., re-booted) the operation every time the setting is tweaked.
A further problem occurs when settings are negotiated between two or more systems. Settings are negotiated based on each system's needs at the time of negotiation. These systems are often stuck with the negotiated settings when the protocol being used prohibits renegotiation.